


My Boyfriend's a Witch

by allthebeautifulthings9828



Series: October Fic Fest [7]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Bisexual Dean, Bisexuality, Castiel Has a Cat, Castiel and Dean in Love, Domestic, Domestic Castiel/Dean Winchester, Elemental Magic, Established Castiel/Dean Winchester, Familiars, Feels, Ficlet Collection, Fights, Fluff, Guns, Halloween, Love, M/M, Magic, Mechanic Dean, Mechanic Dean Winchester, One Shot, One Shot Collection, POV Dean Winchester, Paganism, Romance, Samhain, Spells & Enchantments, Storms, Thunder and Lightning, Thunderstorms, Witch Castiel, Witchcraft, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-06
Updated: 2015-10-06
Packaged: 2018-04-25 04:46:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4947277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allthebeautifulthings9828/pseuds/allthebeautifulthings9828
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moving in with Castiel means getting used to loving a witch but Dean believes he's getting the hang of it. He works at Bobby's garage every day while Castiel looks after the unseen needs of their town. Everything appears to be falling into place and Dean's even getting used to living with his boyfriend's familiar, a cat named Hera, which is no small feat for a man who started out completely in denial about his sexuality. He comes home one day during a storm to find another witch challenging Castiel's territory - a concept he didn't even know existed. Together, Dean and Castiel must fight Rowena to protect their home and the life they want to build.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Boyfriend's a Witch

**Author's Note:**

> This story is a companion piece to an earlier smutty Destiel story called Solstice Fire, which you should read first at http://archiveofourown.org/works/4239171

A storm battered away at Valley Falls on the border of Kansas and Missouri beneath Kansas City. Dean ducked into a brick building where he lived with his boyfriend of nine months--a man generally regarded in town as a mysterious, almost creepy person not to be seen with in daylight. That didn't stop people from coming to the back kitchen door to have their tea leaves read or their dead relatives paged on the afterlife's intercom system. As Dean shook rain off his clothes, he took his time to give any lingering customers a chance to wrap it up before he stomped through the brownstone. They never liked being seen in Castiel's company.

Whatever. It didn't matter as long as they paid Castiel for his talents.

He hung his coat and scarf on the hat tree by the door and made his way to the mud room beside the old kitchen at the back of the house. Hiding out in the mud room while washing off the grime and grease of the garage let him listen for signs of company in the house. Thunder rumbled outside, making the windows tremble, but otherwise, the house sounded rather quiet. Was Castiel even home?

"Hera," called Dean without being too loud. She'd hear him.

By the time he cupped his hands in the farm sink, splashed water on his face, and patted his skin dry with a hand towel, a little face appeared in the doorway. Scruffy around the jaw and neck, smooth between the eyes and over the sloping skull, Hera regarded Dean with a clinical eye.

"Where's Daddy?" He didn't even raise his voice to baby talk. That would have insulted Hera's intelligent sensibilities.

She dropped her bottom on the hardwood floor and placed her front paws neatly together. The tabby cat of browns, blacks, and reds didn't always like Dean but since she'd just recently begun heeding his calls. They were making progress together - Castiel's boyfriend and Castiel's familiar. At least she quietly watched him dry his hands without that agitated hard flick of her bushy tail. A few healed over lines on Dean's forearms reminded him of Hera's displeasure with being forced to share her master.

Another rumbling wave of thunder shook the windows and Dean glanced up at the ceiling as if it might show him the sky. The storm was getting more serious than he expected. He hadn't heard anything on the radio about severe weather on his way home from Bobby's garage. He considered the possibility of a flash flood, which might be a problem since the kitchen floor sat below ground level like most of the brownstones in the area.

Hera turned and darted out of the mud room, pulling Dean's attention back from the practical matters of a possible flash flood to the more magickal matters of letting a cat lead him to his boyfriend. He followed that wild bushy tail around the corner to the narrow, steep stairwell built two centuries ago for practicality and servants rather than the decoration of the upper house. Castiel had told him a spirit lingered in the kitchen from the Edwardian period - a girl no more than sixteen, which unnerved Dean, but Castiel insisted the spirit was friendly and even protective. There would never be a kitchen fire so long as Clara - the kitchen maid - remained in the house.

Nearly losing Hera at the top of the stairs opening into the main floor of living space, Dean picked up his pace. "Hey, some of us are working with two legs here," he called after Castiel's familiar.

The feline moved like a liquid streak through the central hall, crossed in front of the long curving staircase meant to impress visitors, and slinked into the old drawing room. He and Castiel had worked to update the brownstone so it looked more like a home than a Victorian museum but there were still traces of the original owners here and there. Dean had wired old wall sconces for electricity at Castiel's insistence. Only downstairs in the kitchen and neighboring rooms were the lights still powered by the flame. Castiel needed fire to work, he'd explained, but that didn't mean they couldn't live by the comfortable glow of electric lighting elsewhere.

There stood Castiel at the corner of the old drawing room where a set of bookshelves met at the wall juncture. His shoulders sloped at thoughtful angles and Dean knew he had a book balanced on his forearm. It was impossible to see with Castiel's back turned but he knew that body language well enough. Someone in town needed help from those rows and rows of witchy books older than the house itself.

Hera curled and weaved around Castiel's ankles, mewling and purring for attention. His profile dipped and he smiled down at his cat - his familiar - and it only made Hera's voice grow more intense. Stooping to skim fingers through her thick fur, Castiel murmured endearing phrases in a language Dean still couldn't understand. It was Enochian, the ancient language of angels, which threw him off when he realized a real life witch believed in angels. Castiel had only chuckled and insisted that he believed in a great many things, even those he hadn't seen in person. Faith on that scale sometimes made Dean uneasy being a man who needed to see and touch to understand, yet even through that skepticism, he still knew his boyfriend's power to be true. They'd even done a ritual in the woods together meant to help him let go of insecurities over being bisexual.

A faint throb passed through Dean's groin with that particular memory. Awkwardly, he shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

"How do you feel about a roast for dinner?" Castiel asked lightly without looking back to confirm that Dean was really there in the room. He was always doing that kind of thing. The majority of his perception of the world had nothing to do with his rather human eyesight. "It's harvest time. We should eat well before winter really sets in."

"Yeah, except," replied Dean as he came up behind Castiel and nuzzled his neck with a few kisses, "we're not farmers, babe."

Castiel leaned back against his chest. "No, but the agricultural year is very important in my craft."

He smiled. He couldn't help it. Initial fear about the rumors of that witch in town almost made suppress a desire to know him but he reminded himself every day of what he'd be missing if he'd let himself be dictated by gossip. They were the kind of couple that could stand perfectly silent in a room content to hold each other and watch the blustering storm blow by their window. They were gross. Dean knew it and he loved it. He never had the luxury of being gross before with anyone who mattered.

"It's your turn to do the laundry. You left the wet clothes in the washer this morning and by now they're a musty pile of nasty."

And then sometimes Castiel said something like that.

He craned around to look at Dean beneath furrowed brows. "What are you laughing at?"

"You switching from the oracle to the nagging spouse in a split second."

"Somebody has to be practical," replied Castiel, playfully elbowing him in the gut.

Laughing together seemed to generate warmth between their bodies. Ever the emotionally voided, indifferent cat, Hera almost rolled her eyes at the pair of them and wandered off to curl up on the couch. She wound herself into a tight coil of black and rusty fur.

Lightning burst from the blackened sky without warning and announced itself in bright blue and red tendrils of deadly electric current snaking through a tree across the street. Dean jumped backwards and instantly regretted his display of fear as Castiel remained calm, still, and sturdy watching there through the living room window. Even Hera merely lifted her head from her neatly folded paws to look upon the destruction like a minor annoyance than an explosion of fire and thunder ripping open the sky in a fresh downpour.

Dean crept out from behind the floor lamp on the other side of the couch for a look at what had Castiel and Hera so unnervingly still at the window. Something wasn't right. The house plunged into a blackout with a second burst of electricity streaking like fireworks as the tree toppled over onto power lines. A sudden impression of danger had Dean recovering in a fraction of a second from being startled and he rushed across the room. Hera beat him to it, leaping from the sofa to the windowsill. They surrounded their witch, who filled the window poised with shoulders squared off and feet planted securely on the floor, ready for a confrontation.

"What was that?" Dean asked in a low tone.

A fist clenched at Castiel's side. "Rowena."

"Who?"

"She's got balls coming into my territory," he growled low in his throat, though he didn't seem to be speaking to Dean over his shoulder.

"You ... you guys have territories?"

But there wasn't a forthcoming answer. Instead, blazing blue eyes flickered back at him from a retreating face. Castiel took the formal front door outside to the street instead of the back kitchen door as if making a rather loud point. Someone had invaded his territory, whatever that meant, and he wasn't going to tolerate it. Rarely did Dean see him get his fur up. He sure as hell didn't intend on missing the show.

"C'mon, Hera--OW! Shit!" In his haste, Dean drove his shin into the end table, blinded by the sudden loss of electricity and illumination.

Of course Hera had no problem making her way outside. She darted through the shadows like she'd been born from them. He bolted out of the front door and found Castiel standing in the narrow strip of grass between the brownstone and the street. Soaked through already, rain swirled and whipped against everything in its wake, all subject to the whims and biting currents of the wind. A pulsing ripple of thunder didn't even faze Hera, who leaped up on a stone pillar on the front stoop's left corner. Only the need to figure out the dynamics of Castiel's world kept Dean focused on the street rather than the storm.

"Cas!"

The witch spoke over his voice, directed at the slim figure in black across the street. "State your business or leave immediately, Rowena! You know you're not supposed to enter another witch's territory!"

"Ye always were such a wee goody-two-shoes, Castiel." She spoke with a Scottish lilt, which surprised Dean, but apparently Castiel wasn't surprised by it. Red hair curled in bright flaming licks around the crown of her head and poured like lava down over her shoulders and down her back. "Are ye still chasing ghosts away fer the poor people of Valley Falls, then? How noble ye are."

Fluttering at Castiel's thigh caught Dean's attention. He flipped his wrist and white-blue sparks erupted from his fingertips, which took on the shape of a wand. The time for discussion came and went in just a few seconds. Usually Dean knew his boyfriend as the epitome of patience and possessed with the ability to navigate any conflict without raising his voice. Violence was the mark of a person lacking empathy and verbal skills, he'd say. But there when faced with - at least Dean guessed - another witch encroaching on his space, he wasted no time in whipping out the wand. It was that enchanted bit of twisted willow that got Dean's hackles up as he stood higher on the stoop backing his witch.

Rowena saw the wand too and threw her head back with absolutely stereotypical witchy laughter. Groaning, he rolled his eyes. He had no idea where her territory was but maybe her over-the-top attitude made people think she was more nutty than an actual practitioner of magick. Castiel appeared to take her as a serious threat even if Dean thought she was a terrible walking costume. Still, Dean lowered a step or two on the stoop and leaned over Castiel's shoulder.

"I can get my dad's shotgun," he whispered.

"No need." Castiel bared his teeth in a predatory grin meant for the woman. "I do believe Rowena's just leaving."

She rolled her eyes, mimicking Dean, and produced a silver wand from a ball of red sparks in her right palm. "I thought I'd drop by for a wee splash of whiskey and perhaps a bite to eat. What are we having tonight, boys?" A friendly grin never quite reached her eyes, suggesting a soul so cracked and broken that it no longer vibrated with life.

"I said get out," Castiel snarled.

"Darlin', I'm nowhere near your fancy home," replied Rowena with a syrupy voice.

An impatient smile punched from Castiel's chest. "Why are you here?"

"Well...." Rowena turned her eyes skyward and turned her wrist, flipping the silver wand in a slow, conversational gesture, "....I ran into some difficulty with my coven. Blah, blah, blah. They banished me, the spineless, whimpering amateurs."

"I wonder why," Castiel muttered under his breath.

Witchly superhuman hearing made the woman hear him even if he sassed her utterly to himself. Her eyes flashed of sudden rage and a fist raised to the sky called down a bolt of lightning that exploded white-hot fire only a few feet from their front stoop. Latin spilled from her lips in an easy monotone. Her outstretched hand seemed to control the lightning bolt, making it dance and undulate in wicked white heat as it moved closer to their home. Dean backed away but soon he realized that, as Castiel remained a still pillar of strength, Rowena couldn't force her lightning bolt any closer than some invisible barrier. Castiel seemed to have placed a protective border around their property when he wasn't looking.

Castiel tilted his head to one side and examined the lightning bolt with a faint smirk tugging at his mouth. His apparent mockery of her magick sent her spiraling into a deeper rage. Rowena's hair lifted in a cloud of static electricity as she struggled to conjure more magick. She gritted her teeth, eyes squinted with the strain, and threw her other hand with the wand into the effort. Early autumn leaves whipped down the street at the mercy of dueling preternatural winds spun from both witches.

Helpless without any sort of power, Dean could do nothing but stand at the ready in case that lightning bolt twisting in slow motion injured either of them. But then he thought no - fuck this - I have a gun and I know how to use it. No one was going to threaten Castiel and get away with it. Dean rushed indoors again, groping his way through the dark and upstairs to the bedroom where his hands scooted along a high closet shelf. He kept his father's gun in an enormous locked box. Shells were kept in a different box, both of which managed to open without the benefit of light. He loaded the shotgun and slammed the barrel home. All those lessons in disassembling and assembling those weapons suddenly came in handy since he couldn't see much of what he was doing. Quick flashes of the storm made the shadows jump and dance on the walls. Outside, muffled voices suggested Castiel and Rowena were yelling at each other from their perspective sides of the street.

Though Dean didn't quite know what he was doing or if a witch could even be killed, he guessed they weren't above being startled. And if he could startle Rowena, it might give Castiel a second of an advantage to take the upper hand and drive her away.

He flung back the bedroom curtains, opened the window, and slashed a hole through the screen with his pocket knife. That allowed him to rip it open and lean through the hole with the shotgun braced against his shoulder. The street below resembled a scene from Harry Potter movies - a thought that briefly distracted him from covering the witch directly below. Both of them had called down the lightning in the couple of minutes it took him to load the shotgun. He watched Castiel fling his wand and throw green bolts across the street. How were there no witnesses? Could their neighbors not see the unnatural battle happening on their block?

No matter.

Dean braced his forearms on the windowsill and narrowed his eyes at the target. A tree stretched high above the houses. There was a large branch turning and bending like a canopy over the yard above Rowena. It wasn't close enough to hurt her but it would scare her. The key was pulling the trigger at the exact moment the swirling wind would work in his favor.

His shoulders stiffened.

The wall against his knees began to make him ache.

He held his breath.

"Hold on, Cas," he whispered, hoping his own witch wouldn't call up another element to make the shot harder.

Sucking in a tight breath between his teeth, Dean squeezed the trigger. A booming rapport jammed the butt of the shotgun into his shoulder in the same moment that the tree branch ripped and splintered apart from the truck. The invisible wind current caught it just as it began to fall, sweeping it closer to Rowena in the descent, and crashed into the back of her skull. She flew forward right off her feet and face-planted in the mud. The force of the blow seemed to have knocked her out since the lightning bolt she'd been manipulating immediately dissipated into the crackling atmosphere.

Dean scrambled upright and stuck his head out of the bedroom window again. Below, he observed Castiel holding his wand partially behind his hip like a police officer gripping a handgun as he approached a dangerous criminal. He slinked across the street in an overly cautious hunched posture. From his high vantage, Dean couldn't tell if Rowena was truly unconscious or faking her injuries to lure Castiel away from the safety of his magickally protected home. Dean cursed under his breath, realizing his bright idea to help might have actually put Castiel in more danger.

Not willing to wait around and find out, Dean grabbed the shotgun and ran through the dark house. As soon as he emerged outside in the storm again, he raised the weapon to his sore shoulder and kept it trained on Rowena's limp body as he followed Castiel.

"Nice shooting," his witch boyfriend said without looking back.

"Bruised the fuck outta my shoulder," Dean replied. "Is she dead?"

Castiel stepped over the body swathed in a silk dress and pressed two fingers to her throat for a long moment in silence. "She's unconscious but alive."

Unconsciousness wasn't enough to make Dean lower his weapon. "Who is she?"

"One of the elders. The grand coven is over in Britain, you might've guessed, and it sounds like they banished her." As he spoke, Castiel wriggled his fingers against his palm and more sparks materialized a roll of white ribbon. "Most witches only feel safe in the sanctuary of a coven. A witch gone rogue like this one is a dangerous thing. Desperation can make witches like her reckless. I don't care why or how she got banished. I'm not offering sanctuary after being accosted this way."

Still pointing the shotgun at her limp body, Dean crouched along with Castiel. "So now what?"

"Now we bind her."

"Come again?"

A smile flickered on Castiel's lips as if he saw the thoughts Dean shuffled through at the mention of binding anything. "I love your mind. No, not sexy binding," said Castiel kindly, although he found it amusing. "We're going to keep her from doing magic while she's held in the room next to the laundry."

"Wait, we're bringing her inside?"

"She can't be released with this much pent-up rage. It'll put everyone in Valley Falls in danger, not to mention the likelihood of her attacking us directly again. She must be dealt with on our own turf. Homefield advantage is a true concept." The ability to speak coherently and calmly while preparing a spell never failed to stun Dean into awed silence. Castiel's white ribbon unfurled much longer than Dean had estimated and one witch wrapped the satin around the unconscious witch's wrists. The binding took on a figure eight shape that turned Rowena's hands behind her back. "I bind you, Rowena, High Witch of Scotland, from releasing your magic in haste and harm. I bind you, Rowena, High Witch of Scotland, from releasing your magic in haste and harm. I bind you, Rowena, High Witch of Scotland, from releasing your magic in haste and harm."

Together, mortal and witch, lovers and partners, heaved the intruder's body into their arms in the pouring rain. They showed her body the respect she never intended for theirs as they carefully carried her indoors. Trotting ahead, Hera skipped over the threshold just as the electricity blazed into life again.

(To be continued at Thanksgiving.)


End file.
